Blushing Pilgrims
by icepixel
Summary: Meg Thatcher is not a fan of Romeo and Juliet.  However, on a trip to New Burbage with Constable Fraser, she finds a few reasons to reevaluate her opinion. Crossover with Slings & Arrows.  Fraser/Thatcher, Geoffrey/Ellen.


She is not going to cry. She is far too old, and anyway, it's more of a cliché than she can bear, crying at the end of _Romeo and Juliet_.

Her eyes are burning. Shit.

In the darkness of the theatre, as Montague and Capulet say their sorrowful last lines to each other, she feels a handkerchief pressed into her palm. She looks up to see Fraser staring at her, his own eyes suspiciously bright. She turns away, then wipes her cheeks with the cloth.

The cast gets a standing ovation a few minutes later. She has to blink back more tears when the leads appear. It certainly doesn't help that Geoffrey Tennant could be Fraser's twin brother. It's eerie.

God, she hates this play.

Once the bows are over, she gathers her program and debates whether she ought to return the handkerchief, desperately pretending she is not sniffling. Fraser, ever solicitous, asks if she is all right.

She doesn't have the energy to snap at him. Instead, she forces a tight smile, doesn't meet his eyes, and says, "The leads were very...moving."

"Yes," he says.

They follow the crowd out of the theatre and onto the street. They get a few steps in the direction of the hotel the Canadian Cultural Interchange Commission has put them up in, and then he stops and asks if she'd like to take a walk. It is ten o'clock at night, and they're both wearing their dress reds, but they have to go back to Chicago tomorrow, and she's willing to do something foolish if it means she can pretend just a little bit longer that she is not his commanding officer, he is not her subordinate, and they are destined to never be more than that.

She tells him to lead on.

Because he is Fraser, they inevitably find themselves in a large park along the river, the grass plush under their boots and the water flowing merrily between its low banks. Swans, asleep near the water, mutter and sigh in avian dreams.

They don't seem to be going anywhere in particular, and so when they step onto a footbridge that crosses the river at its narrowest point, their boots _thunk-thunk_ing on the wood, she sits down, hanging her legs over the edge like a child.

He joins her, a decorous foot between them. The last of the long summer twilight colors the sky ahead, and she can just see his face when she glances sideways. Good. After her reaction to the play they just saw, she doesn't know that she could face him in the fullness of daylight.

They can't just sit here in silence, though, or at least she can't, so after too much of it, she asks, "What did you think of the play?"

He cocks his head, contemplative. "I thought it was excellent. As you said, the actors playing the eponymous characters were marvelously expressive."

She closes her eyes, pressing her lips together. "Fraser," she starts after a deep breath. "I...I'm afraid I lied to you earlier. I'm sorry."

"About what?"

She almost winces. "It wasn't the acting that made me...that upset me." She finally dares to look at him, and finds that he is watching her with a kind of understanding she both welcomes and fears. She doesn't know what he's going to say in response, and to be honest, she isn't sure she wants to know, so she rambles on. "You know, that used to be my favorite play when I was a teenager. I read the balcony scene so many times that I had it memorized, and sometimes I'd just recite those beautiful words to myself. They were like music." She points her toe and moves it in a circle, her boot just skimming the surface of the water. "I thought the way Romeo and Juliet fell in love even though their families hated each other was so romantic." _Please,_ she thinks. She isn't sure she can get through this conversation any other way than this artifice, this pretense of dramaturgical discussion. "Later, of course, I realized that both of them were idiots. If they'd just thought for a moment, they both would've lived. Of course, then you wouldn't have a play."

He smiles just a bit at that. "People call it the greatest love story ever told, but I've always seen it as more of a cautionary tale—defy your parents, defy fate, and the universe will punish you for not knowing your place."

This feels exactly like the time a horse kicked her in the stomach when she was twelve, all shock and white-hot pain. She actually finds herself unable to breathe for a moment. "Oh," she finally whispers.

"On the other hand," he continues, suddenly turning to look right at her, fixing his most intense gaze on her face, "perhaps the point is that even so...they try. They know the odds are against them, but they still make the attempt, and make it wholeheartedly. And we always wonder if maybe this time, it will work out for them."

Her mouth has dropped open. His expression is so perfectly neutral that she has no idea how to read his words. "Fraser," she says, feeling shaky. Feeling, maybe, a little hopeful. "What exactly are you saying?"

His expression softens into something she might call wistful. "'I am no pilot,'" he quotes softly, "'yet wert thou as far as that vast shore washed with the farthest sea, I should adventure for such merchandise.'"

It's probably a good thing that night is almost fully upon them, or else the blush blazing on her cheeks would be visible from several meters away. When she started this conversation, she hadn't even been sure exactly where she wanted it to go, but she would not trade the path it took for anything in the world.

She is never, ever going to be able to wipe this smile off of her face.

"Not that I think you or any person should be referred to as 'merchandise,'" he continues, "but that is the text, and—"

"Fraser," she says, not about to let him talk this moment to an unnatural end. "Shut up." Before he can get out the "yes, ma'am" she _knows_ is forming on his lips, she leans over and kisses him.

* * *

"Well, would you look at that."

"At what?"

From a bench on the other side of the river, Geoffrey Tennant points to the couple on the footbridge. They are just visible, mostly because of their red jackets, in the fading light.

"Huh," Ellen Fanshaw says. "I guess the Mounties really do always get their man."

"Or woman, as it may be." She laughs and then elbows him for the poor quality of his joke.

"You know, I saw them in the third row tonight," he says after a moment. She raises her eyebrow. "The suits were pretty hard to miss," he says, perhaps a bit defensively. It's not like he gawks at the audience like an apprentice when he's supposed to be directing his lines to someone onstage, but if the blocking gives him the opportunity, sometimes he does try to see how things are going over out there. And really, two Mounties in full regalia did stick out. "I think if they had leaned any further away from each other during the balcony scene, they would've been in different countries." He supposes that goes to show what appearances count for.

Ellen laces her fingers with his. "Was that why you blanked before 'by yonder blessed moon I swear'? I thought I was going to have to feed you the line."

He smiles at that, and raises their joined hands so that he can kiss her knuckles. "No. That was because of you. You were...entrancing."

"Geoffrey," she scolds in that tone of voice that really begs for more flattery. "You tell me that every night."

"And have you gotten tired of hearing it?"

"No," she says, grinning. He's always liked her honesty on those occasions when she chooses to show it.

He stands up, pulling her along with him. "Let's go home," he says. Ellen beams up at him, and he wraps his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close as they leave the park to the swans, to the deepening night, and to the two Mounties kissing each other on the bridge.


End file.
